Rocket Tutors

In 36 hours, two coding beginners built Rocket Tutors using Claude, an AI co-developer. A free, interactive tutoring platform that helps every student reach new heights.

Comment

Inspiration

We saw that Secondary Math I is the most failed class in high school, so we wanted to change that. Many students in our local community struggle because they don't have affordable tutoring. We already had passionate tutors and motivated students, but we lacked a platform to connect them. This challenge is the heart of our CalHacks project.

What it does

Rocket Tutors is a free web platform that connects students who need help in math with volunteer tutors. Students can sign up based on their math needs, automatically get matched with a tutor, and view upcoming sessions on a personal dashboard. Additionally, donors can see how their contributions help students learn.

How we built it

We built Rocket Tutors with minimal prior coding experience. We mainly used HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, with creative help from Claude as well. First, we used a collaborative design to map out user flows and page layouts before implementing them. We created five pages: a landing page, a student sign-up page, a tutor-matching page, a student dashboard, and a donation page.

Challenges we ran into

Neither of us had very much web development experience going into CalHAcks, so it was pretty hard to figure things out at first. We also had to balance design, development, and study time, since we didn't have much time to prepare.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We built a fully functional multi-page web app in 36 hours. It's designed and implemented in a way that it is easy for the audience to understand. Additionally, we learned fundamental coding skills by collaborating with AI rather than just copy-pasting code.

What we learned

We learned that hackathons aren't just about who can build the coolest robot or has the most impactful project. Working with Claude taught us how to communicate clearly about what we wanted to build and how front-end technologies are able to work together.

What's next for Rocket Tutors: From Zero Code to Lift-Off

After CalHacks, we plan to keep building Rocket Tutors into an even better platform by addting a backend database for better functionality and integrating video tutoring and scheduling features. We hope to turn this hackathon project into a real-world education platform that can help students everywhere to succeed.

Built With

Share this project:

Updates